Morgan Cohron, 13, a student at Fairhope Middle, balances glasses during the Worlds of Opportunity career expo in downtown Mobile Thursday. About 186 businesses showcased potential careers to about 10,000 middle schoolers during the two-day event. (Bill Starling | bstarling@press-register.com)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Fairhope Middle student Morgan Cohron held the tray of champagne glasses mostly steady as she hurried across the floor, pretending to be a waitress.

As part of the Worlds of Opportunity career expo, Morgan was one of nearly 10,000 middle school students from southwest Alabama to learn about possible careers at the Mobile Civic Center Wednesday and today. The expo features booths and hands-on activities for 186 different careers ranging from healthcare to public service to construction.

Morgan, who loves to cook meals such as ravioli in alfredo sauce, enjoyed activities in the hospitality section of the expo the most. She said she doesn't know what she wants to do when she finishes high school, but becoming a chef is a possibility.

The expo, she said, "is fun and educational. It shows you the different jobs and what you can do."

This is the third year that Southwest Alabama Workforce Development Council put on the career expo, designed to get students to start focusing in middle school on what they want to do as adults.

Larry Mouton, director of career-technical education for the Mobile County school system, said students should start thinking seriously about what they want to be when they grow up in the eighth-grade. They need to learn what it takes to get there - including making good grades, behaving in school and staying off drugs - and start planning.

In coming days, students who attended the career expo will participate in online surveys, known as career cruising, to help them figure out what they're good at, and what type of job they should pursue.

"Our message for this is that you don't need to leave Mobile to find a great job," Mouton said. "We want our best and brightest to stay here."

Mouton said many students this age pick tend what he calls "fantasy careers," such as crime scene investigators, made famous on television shows, and video game designers. He said they need to know that those jobs can be hard to find.

Oftentimes students don't realize, until events like Worlds of Opportunity, what jobs are more readily available. Locally, there's great need in aerospace, shipbuilding and other industries.

Several students who stopped at the Press-Register's booth to see news from the job fair posted online and tweeted said they were interested in being a reporter or photographer. Others, though, preferred being on camera, reading aloud news stories from a mock television studio and forecasting the weather.

Derrick Edwards, an eighth-grader at Denton Middle in Mobile, said he wants to be a fireman “because you can help people and save people.”

On Thursday, he said he liked the construction portion of the Worlds of Opportunity, including an activity where students got to build a room of a house.

“This makes you think about what you want to do when you grow up,” he said. “I might change my mind, and do something that they have here.”

Emily Gerald, and eighth-grader at Corpus Christi Catholic School in Mobile, wants to be a veterinarian, because she has always liked animals. But, as she put on a helmet and welded Thursday, she said she learned about some new careers that classmates might be interested in.

“If someone likes to work with their hands, they could be a welder,” she said. “I think a lot of people will come out of here knowing what type of job they want to do.”